


Topside

by CommonEvilMastermind



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Heist Scene, Prologue to eventual solavellan, Trouble Is Caused, lots of swears no really lots, more than ten swears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-30 21:24:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8549629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommonEvilMastermind/pseuds/CommonEvilMastermind
Summary: Cyberpunk AU. 
Zo Lavellan is a hacker on a mission to retrieve goods from above the Shade. Since her teammates are Blackwall and Sera, it does not go as planned.





	

She was twenty three years old on the day she first saw the sun.

“Hey, elfy. Ever been topside?” Sera smirked.

Zo, for her part, was positive they didn’t need that many grenades. “Sure,” she shrugged nonchalantly.

Sera snorted. “Fucking lying, that’s what you are. You ain’t been up there, you couldn’t fool shit.”

“How the fuck do you know?” she lobbed back, numbers dancing across her retinal input. Everything looked good. “You’re shit.”

“But you can’t fool me, so it ain’t a point. See? Hey grump-arse, you ever been up top?” Sera called to Blackwall.

“Every chance I get,” the muscle said, readjusting his gear (plasma rifle, concussive shotgun, hand canon, folding laser sniper rifle, nanobot slinger) for the thousandth time. “No better feeling. None. And I’ve done enough to say that is the case. None of your stims even come close.”

“My stims?” Zo said archly, fingers dancing as her arms hung by her sides. The slight golden threads leading to each fingertip recognized the slight movements as letters. “ _My_ stims are not-”

Sera made a rude noise. “Can we go or can we go?”

“Going.” Zo pushed her program out of her personal cortex. It flashed through the air and burrowed into the console of the service elevator. The crimson lights flashed, turned amber, then green.

The small elevator hummed softly, dinged once, and shot upwards faster than the speed of sound.

_U SURE THIS SAFE?!!!!!!!_ Blackwall texted them both.

Zo snorted and mentally grabbed an image from her eye-cam, pushing it to her team. It was a memory of the outside of the elevator, a warning panel over the controls that said USE FOR EQUIPMENT ONLY.

_WHEEEEEEEEEEE!_ Sera sent. They were all pressed to the bottom of the elevator, and Sera was grinning like a maniac. _WHEEEE!_

Zo and Blackwall exchanged a look. _It was nice working with you_ , he texted.

Zo sent back the Dalish prayer that you say when you think that you’re going to die.

The elevator slowed its ascent gently, then came to a whisper-calm stop. The doors slid open.

“Hey, who called the elevator?” someone said, someone approaching. “Mac, did you-?”

Blackwall was already on his feet and out of the elevator before Zo had scrambled upright. She felt more than heard the _foom, foom, foom_ of the shotgun. By the time she and Sera were out of the elevator, two techs were lying on the floor, unconscious, bleeding slightly from their noses.

“Nice of you to join me,” he drawled conversationally. “Don’t want you to miss all the fun.”

“You coulda left one for me,” Sera pouted. “Rude.”

“No, I just didn’t think we should start setting people on fire quite yet,” Blackwall told her. “It is a stealth mission.” He blinked, thinking. “You do know what stealth means, right?”

“Oh, suck a-”

“Sera, check the hallway,” Zo cut in from the terminal. It had an input/output jack, which was great, so she yanked her cord from where it hung safely over her shoulder and connected. Her eyes glazed as the system threw up an UNRECOGNIZED USER error into her mind. “I know,” she muttered at it. “Shush.”

The program she had prepared earlier flew down the cord and worked its magic until the whole terminal started glowing a soft, welcoming white. USER ACCEPTED, it told her happily.

“Damn straight user accepted,” she muttered. “Thanks.”

Her program beeped cheerfully and flew back up her cord into her cortex, curling itself in happily.

“Hall’s clear,” Sera whispered loudly from the doorway. “Where’s the shit?”

“Calm the fuck down,” Zo said. “I’m getting the transport logs.”

Blackwall was peering out the door. “Sera, there’s-”

“I got it, I got this one,” Sera grinned, throwing herself into the hallway. There was an alarming beeping sound and a small concussive blast and the elf was back, dragging a slightly blackened shipping robot behind her.

“Helpful,” Blackwall muttered. “Subtle, too.”

“Like you were so quiet, you-”

“Got it,” Zo interrupted.

Sera perked up, bouncing on the balls of her toes. Blackwall raised an eyebrow. “Now you’re going to tell us the loot is right next door, and we can grab it and go home.” Sera wilted.

“Nope.” Zo pushed them the map of the complex. “Twenty floors up.”

Blackwall groaned. Sera cheered. “Come on, you lagheads!” She nearly bounced out of the door.

“I hate this part,” Blackwall grumbled. Zo snorted and strode past him, following Sera down the wide corridor.

It led to a large metal door that needed a nudge or two from her program, which pinged in delight, happy to be of use. The door opened with a backblast of air, leading to the storage column.

“Woah,” Zo said, blinking.

“Never seen one of these before?” Blackwall asked. “They’re a bit much, the first time.”

“It’s… I knew it was huge, but-” The storage column, itself as wide as a city block, went up and up and up, so far that she couldn’t see the top of it, only the checkmarked walls vanishing high above them. Each box in the wall was the door to a storage unit, and the boxes numbered in the… Creators. Thousands. Tens of thousands? She felt dizzy, just looking up, watching the structure rise above her. The scale was staggering. Who could ever have this much _stuff?_

“Yeah, yeah, it’s all big and huge and whatever,” Sera was saying. “Which shit is our shit? Elfy. This is the good part!”

“That’s subjective,” Blackwall muttered under his breath.

Zo shook herself – there was no ceiling, nothing above her, nothing to keep her _down_ – and queried the map. “It should be, uh, oh fuck. That’s pretty far up.”

Blackwall huffed, displeased.

Sera bounced on her toes. “Yeah, yeah? Where is it?”

Zo pushed the information to her teammate, highlighting their goal in neon blue in the other elf’s field of vision.

“Where, I don’t see shit!”

Zo sighed internally and added a few flashing arrows to Sera’s visual map. Sera craned her neck upwards. “Oh shit,” the thief giggled. “That’s a good one.”

“Maker preserve us,” Blackwall muttered.

Something clanked, the sound of a door opening nearby.

“Get your whozits out, we gotta go fast!” Sera said.

“Whozit,” Blackwall whispered, digging into the overlarge pockets of his cargo pants. “Nice and descriptive.”

Sera took out her grappling shot and the launcher. “The whozit whatzit gizmohoober.”

Zo patted her belt where her motorized rope assist should have been hanging, and felt a lurch of panic when her hand met empty cloth. Stomach buckling, she checked her pockets. The program she had written purred to her from in her cortex and pulled up an archive memory, of the rope assist going into her pack, in the side pocket. Zo checked, and blew out a breath of thanks when her fingers met the cool metal surface. The program whirred happily.

“Setting a five second delay!” Sera said, aiming. Her grappling launcher was a sleek, powerful, completely manual device. It was quiet and light, but relied totally on the user for draw, aim, release, and attachment.

Sera grinned and released. The grappling shot twinkled as it vanished above into the gloom, trailing the thin lead wire behind it. The wire stopped and tightened as Sera snapped herself on and activated the assist. She flew up into the darkness.

Zo and Blackwall scrambled after the wire, clipping on and activating. A second after they left the ground, the wire started to break down from the bottom going up, giving poor Blackwall precious little time to disengage from the wire onto the thin metal platform before it vanished completely, falling to the ground below.

“Five seconds?” he hissed to Sera. “Are you trying to get us-”

“Shaddup,” Zo snapped, steading herself. The ledge they were balancing on was scarcely twenty centimeters wide.

“Fine,” Blackwall grumbled as Zo pressed herself against the door. “But can I remind everyone that there’s no payoff if we die?”

“Yeah, but wasn’t it funny?” Sera said, still laughing. “Oh no, gonna dump us on our arses, five seconds! Oh no!”

Zo ignored them. In front of her was the door. Only the door mattered. Not the dizzying drop below them, not the tower that stretched upwards without end. Only the door.

Her program pinged reassuringly, flowing out of her cortex and into the amber glowing lock panel. Zo hissed at the information it relayed back – the security was tighter than she had been led to believe. The lock panel was secured by a unique electronic key, not unexpected, but also a growling amber guardian routine. This could be tricky.

Then there was a rumbling, a vibration that traveled through the soles of her bare feet and made her cling even harder to the sheer metal of the wall.

“Not that I want to rush,” Blackwall said conversationally. “But that load bot seems to be coming our way.”

It was, a huge metal shipping container that slid along the walls. Would it squish them, or just knock them off into the huge drop below?

“Move your tits, elfy!” Sera yelped.

Zo didn’t answer, one hand on the controls, plunging her consciousness into the panel. Her program was leading the guard routine on a merry dance, but it wouldn’t hold for long. The other AI started to register a threat, turning from warm amber to a bright, warning red.

_Shit._ No time for subtlety. Zo scrambled to disengage the thing, but it was too fast, the alert tendrils priming, ready to spread-

And then it was gone.

Zo blinked.

It was gone and her program beeped at her cheerfully.

“Zo!” came Blackwall’s voice, from back in her physical body. The loader was coming.

Shit. Zo scrambled at the lock, feeling the tugs on her arms. _Almost,_ she thought. _Almost-_

The loader was close enough, she could feel it in her skin. Even buried in the tech, she could feel the vibrations. _Almost-!_

She toppled forward, her mind torn violently from the green-glowing lock. Everything was pitch black as the loader moved in front of the door, and she scrambled. Blackwall, Sera!

The loader passed, letting the light shine in through the open doorway. There was no sign of her companions. Had they-?

Then a grapple-line zipped into the storage compartment, followed by a giggling elf and a surly human. “Let’s not do that again,” Blackwall said, untethering.

“You’re joking, right? That was _wicked._ ” Sera looked incredibly pleased with herself. Her glee fell a little as she looked around the compartment. “This it?”

It seemed so. Though the compartment itself was huge, there was only one singular box, a plastisteel cube only a half meter high.

Sera groaned. “Boring.”

Blackwall, eyebrows raised, walked around the thing. “I was expecting something slightly...”

“Ugh, whatever,” Sera said, disgusted. “Let’s get back to the Neath and get our credits for this crap.”

“It might have something good in it,” Blackwall said. “Jewels, fancy tech?”

“Probably something else stupid and boring,” Sera said. “Let’s go.”

Blackwall glanced at Zo, Creators knew why, and she shrugged. They found what they had come for. Didn’t matter if it was flashy.  “Sera, get us down without dying?”

“Yeah, fine, whatever.” Sera grumpily shot them a line back to the ground. They sped down, Blackwall with the box under one arm. “Stupid job anyway. No fun.”

“Not everything can end in explosions,” Blackwall told her as they hit the bottom of the storage tower. “Even on trips above the Shade.”

Sera snorted. “Says you.” They took off on a quick walk down the tunnel where they had originally come, their path marked out in their visual fields. “I don’t-” The woman stopped suddenly. “Wait.”

“What is it now?” Blackwall said.

“Smell that?”

Zo took a deep breath through her nose. It smelled strange, almost wet, like the air itself was heavy. What the fuck?

“Oh, no you don’t,” Blackwall started.

Sera cackled and veered left through an unmarked door, breaking into a run.

Blackwall shook his head. “Might as well, I suppose.” He turned to the door. “You coming?”

Zo shook her head. “What? Where?”

“Oh, this is your first time. Come on, then,” Blackwall said.

Zo looked down the hallway, to where their lift was waiting. “Where the fuck are we going?”

“You’ll see,” said the human. “Come on.”

This seemed like a very stupid, very bad plan. They had the goods. There was no reason, none at all, to go haring off into the unknown corridors of the facility, not when-

Zo ground her teeth and stepped through the fucking door.

“That’s it, hurry along,” grinned Blackwall. “Can’t be far.” He took the lead, first one door, short corridor, another door.

“Do you even know where we’re going?” Zo demanded.

“Just – damn.” Blackwall opened a door into a security console area. Three guards blinked back at them. “Here we go.”

Zo muttered something under her breath and sent her program out to the nearest guard’s cortex. It burrowed through the cheap security layer and whited-out the visual cortex, leaving the guard blind while Blackwall did some heavy concussive trauma around the room.

“This is fucking stupid,” she told the human frankly when all the guards were unconscious. “We should-”

“Just wait a moment.” They backed out into the hallway again and Blackwall chose the next door over. “It has to be this one.” The door whooshed open and more of that heavy air hit her like a physical blow.

“What-” she said, and then she lost her voice completely.

“Ahhh.” Blackwall stepped in behind her, the door whooshing shut behind him. “There we go.”

So bright! It was-

It was-

Was-

What was it? Like a scene from a vid. She looked up, and up and up and there was, there was nothing. Nothing above. Just emptiness, going on forever, up and up, disappearing into the blue-

Blue.

It couldn’t be.

“It hits you like that, the first time up top,” Blackwall said, and his hand was a grounding presence on her arm. “Step up here.” He urged her forward. The ground seemed to glow, and then the glow hit her skin, warm, it was warm, it-

“There you go,” Blackwall said, and she held out her arms as if to bathe herself in this warm light. “Sunlight.”

“Sun?” she murmured, but all of the breath had left her lungs. She looked up and there, a ball, like a huge light source just hanging untethered in the unending blue, so bright-!

“No, don’t look right at it,” Blackwall said, and she pulled herself back before she could fall straight up, straight up into the ceiling without end, into the… the sky. Instead she watched the light fall over her hands, her palms, watched how rich and brown her skin seemed.

Blackwall looked different too. There were so many more colors in his salt-and-pepper hair, undertones of golds and silvers, and his eyes seemed to catch, so brightly did they shine. This light left nothing untouched – their clothes seemed dirtier, edges ragged, and the box with the goods seemed even smaller still. It was all, everything, so different. So strange.

“What the fuck is this place?” she murmured.

“It’s a garden,” Blackwall said. “They use it to clean the air up here. Plants do it naturally, did you know?”

“Plants?” Zo said. There were green things stretching up all around them, some tall with broad attachments at the end, some smaller and more colorful. She had thought them plastic, machines with decoration or odd design. But when she lifted a hesitant finger and touched one of the attachments, it did not feel like plastic. It felt like waxy paper, only different. It felt alive. “Plants,” she murmured in wonder. “Alive. Fuck.”

“A bit prettier than our algae and mold, you think?” Blackwall had crouched down, box still under one arm, and was running the pad of his finger along something that looked like a red, silken cup on top of a green stick. “Things like this used to cover the whole world.”

Zo felt unhinged, like she was falling, although her feet were firmly on the warm concrete path. Everything felt so different, here. Like she had suddenly been transported to another world. “I don’t,” she started. “I can’t-”

Then the alarm bells started to ring.

“Run!” Sera hollered, barreling past them, laughing like a maniac. “Run, run!”

“Oh fuck.” They turned and broke into a sprint as shouting erupted from deeper within the garden, followed by the stinging whine of stun bolts. The door opened in front of them without prompting and they flew through the corridors that were flooded with red light.

“LEFT!” Zo hollered as they neared a corner. “GO FUCKING LEFT!”

“The lift is right!” Sera said, skidding left.

“It’ll be locked down!” Blackwall yelled. “We need to find a different way!”

“RIGHT!” Zo shouted. “Through the door, now!” They did, and the door slid shut peacefully behind them.

“Ewgh,” gagged Sera. “What’s-”

“Garbage chute,” Zo panted, trying not to breathe. “It’ll get us back underneath.”

“Right,” said Blackwall, the biggest of them, looking at the chute. “I think I hate this plan.”

“Sera, try to keep us from dying?” Zo asked as someone started to thump on the door.

“What fun is that?” the elf grinned cockily. Then she held her nose and whooped in excitement, jumping down the open chute like a cannonball.

“You next,” Zo told Blackwall, as the shouting from outside grew louder. “I’ll land on you if you get stuck.”

“Fucking wonderful,” muttered Blackwall, but he stepped into the chute, the box held above his head.

The door crashed open and five stun bolts whizzed through the air. Zo ducked, knowing she was too late, feeling the heat of the bolts as they soaked into her skin, fried her tech, fried-

That-

The bolts were just, they were hanging. Hanging there in midair, frozen. That wasn’t fucking possible. Bolts were light, and light, light couldn’t just-

Her program was making a fuss in the back of her cortex, so she took three shaking steps backwards and let herself fall into the chute. Immediately, the opening sealed. She plunged into the stinking blackness, still shaken.

What…?

Then she stopped falling as suddenly as she had begun, with a horrible yank around her midriff. “Gotcha!” Sera crowed cheerfully, then giggled. “That was fun.”

“Fun,” said a dower Blackwall, jammed into a service hatch along the side of the chute. “Sure.”

“You liked it, right, elfy?” Sera asked, reeling Zo in. “First time you been topside.”

“Do you think the whole fucking world used to be like that?” Zo said, remembering. “Before they built the Shade.”

“It’s a trade-off,” Blackwall shrugged, wiggling through the service hatch. The others followed. “Without the Shade soaking up the sunlight, we’d have nothing to power the Neath. But there wouldn’t be a Neath, then, would there?”

“Plants everywhere? And all that bright? Pah,” Sera contributed. “I think it’s better now. Let the uppers have their gardens and their sun and we’ll just stay in the Neath and make life shit for them.”

“We could go up there again,” Zo said, thinking of the warmth on her skin. “We don’t make a bad team.”

Blackwall paused. “I’ve had worse.”

“You’re not too bad,” Sera said. “For an elf.”

“Let’s turn in the shit and get a drink before we talk about it,” suggested Blackwall, ignoring the irony. “Who’s our contact?”

“Madame du Fer,” Zo pulled from her records. “She’ll give us the payment and- oh, shit.”

“What now?” Blackwall sighed.

“No, it’s not bad-”

“For once.”

“Shut it. If we get back to her within the next hour she’ll throw in a bonus.”

“Bonus?” Sera perked up. “Shortcut’s this way!”

Blackwall and Zo exchanged a look. “I already hate this,” Blackwall sighed.

Zo snorted and let him lead the way, rubbing at her palm. She took a second to peek under her glove – under the knit, her skin was still glowing a faint green.

“STOP LAGGING!” Sera hollered.

“FUCK OFF!” Zo shouted back, and caught up to the others with long, loping strides. It was fine. Probably.

And the bonus was worth it, when they arrived at the drop point fifty-eight minutes later. Madame de Fer looked down her nose at their sweaty, panting faces, but fulfilled her side of the bargain. She cracked the side of the crate and offered each thief a single red orb from the inside. “They are called apples,” she said haughtily. “They will fetch you a great profit-”

Sera bit into hers, then sucked air in through her gums. “Shit!” she said, laughing. “Fuck! That’s good!”

“Thanks,” Zo said, and tucked her prize in her pocket along with the credit chips. It was only hours later, safe inside her hideaway, that she carefully sliced into the thing and took a small, slow bite.

It was fucking incredible.

She offered some to her program too.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written during NaNo, so I apologize if it's more slapdash than usual! I wrote "Topside" to help me flesh out my cyberpunk setting for an eventual Solavellan fic. I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> Find me on [Tumblr!](http://commonevilmastermind.tumblr.com)


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